Committee Reports

• Editorial Committee of Integrative and Comparative Biology

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Editorial Committee of Integrative and Comparative Biology

A TIME OF CHANGE An editorial in volume 46, Number 1, of Integrative and Comparative Biology described the changes in the journal that have taken place recently---new editorship, new publisher, new online host and a more highly automated system of handling manuscripts that should lead to more prompt appearance of papers. The intent is to publish symposia within the year they are presented at meetings. To make this work, I am hoping that beginning next year the participants of symposia will submit the final version of their contributions at the time of the annual meeting.
Important new features are (1) improved electronic tracking and processing of articles with their appearance in electronic form as citable papers well before their appearance in hard copy, (2) an attractive, colored cover, different for each issue and related to the contents of that issue, (3) increased international scope of the journal, and (4) more frequent and direct involvement of the Editorial Board. Readers are referred to the editorial for a more detailed account of the new procedures.
The intent is that these changes will enhance the scientific excellence of the society and at the same time preserve its cherished traditions and attitudes.

---Harold Heatwole, Editor in Chief

INTRODUCING THE NEW EDITOR AND ASSISTANT EDITOR

For those of you who do not know the new Editor in Chief, Harold Heatwole, or the new Assistant Editor, Nancy Cochran, the following brief biographies will introduce them.

Harold Heatwole grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in a Mennonite Community. He attended Goshen College in Indiana for his undergraduate degree in Botany (1955) and then, supported by an NSF pre-doctoral fellowship, went to the University of Michigan for his masters (1958) and Ph.D. (1960) in Zoology, with a dissertation on forest floor amphibians. He stayed on at University of Michigan as an instructor for one year to take the place of his supervisor, Dr. Frederick Test, who was going on sabbatical. His first permanent job was at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus, where he was an Assistant Professor, then Associate Professor until 1966. He taught courses in Ecology and Comparative Anatomy. During the school year he investigated amphibian water balance and conducted faunal surveys of the Puerto Rican-Virgin Island archipelago and in the summer carried out research on the ecology of amphibians and reptiles in the Darien region of Panama. In 1966 he emigrated to Australia as a Senior Lecturer in Zoology at the University of New England in New South Wales. He taught Comparative Physiology there and continued his herpetological researches, especially on sea snakes. The sea snake research was facilitated by Alpha Helix expeditions to Indonesia and the Philippines, an Acherod expedition to the Great Barrier Reef and a number of expeditions to the Ryukyu Islands and the southwestern Pacific islands sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Science, Education and Culture. During this time, Heatwole also branched out and studied the ecology of sea birds and the community structure of ants. The latter interest involved him in the Pre-Saharan Biome study in Tunisia for five seasons (1974-1978) and on several research expeditions in Western China with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He also participated in a number of expeditions to Antarctica under the auspices of the Australian National Research Expeditions to study the ecology and distribution of tardigrades. One of these was a summer spent in the interior in the Prince Charles Mountains. On the basis of his Saharan and Antarctic work he was elected a fellow of the Explorer's Club.
Along with these activities, he found time to carry out a Ph.D. program in Botany at the University of Queensland (1987) with a dissertation on the dynamics of the vegetation of the small islands on the Great Barrier Reef and to earn a D.Sc. (1981) from the University of New England with a thesis on ecological herpetology.
He returned to the United States in 1991 to take up a Professorship at North Carolina State University where he was Head of the Zoology Department for five years. Currently he teaches courses in Animal Diversity, Herpetology, and Desert Ecology and is carrying out research on the coevolution of venomous snakes and their prey. He conducts field courses each year and takes students to biologically interesting places such as the Namib Desert, Trinidad rainforests, Australian reefs, the Antarctic and the Galapagos. These courses serve as an opportunity to prepare videos for use by high school teachers and for university courses.
He is still continuing his education and is currently working on a Ph.D. in Geography at James Cook University in Australia with plans to submit the dissertation next year.
Editing is one of his main interests. He was an editor of the Australian Journal of Ecology for several years, and is currently editing a series of books on "Amphibian Biology", now in its seventh volume. His hobbies are philately, numismatics and travel. For many years he engaged in competitive roller-skate dancing, from which he retired several years ago. He has been married to the artist/potter Audry Yoder Heatwole for more than 50 years.

Nancy Cochran is a North Carolinian with a long association with North Carolina State University. She grew up in Ashville, NC and her liberal arts undergraduate degree is from Blanton's College in that city. She became Program Assistant in the Zoology Department of NCSU in 1972 and later Administrative Assistant for the Undergraduate Program in 1984. In 1992 she took on additional duties as Student Services Manager for the Department of Zoology as well as Manager of the University Preprofessional Health Sciences Program. She retired from these positions on 31 January 2006. Her retirement lasted only overnight as the following morning she took up her position as Assistant Editor of ICB.
She has served other journals in similar capacities. She was editorial assistant to P. C. Bradbury, then editor of the Journal of Protozoology and to G. C. Miller while he was editor of the Journal of Parasitology.
Her hobbies are gardening, reading and travel.